See, there's this thing that happens when you battle anxiety of depression. If you're lucky, you get better, and you go through days, weeks, months, and if you're amazingly lucky - years without relapsing back into that space.
I can't speak for everyone who has battled for mental health issues, nor could I ever expect to. But for me personally, knowing what I've been through, the hardest thing to have happen - is when you relapse. When you know that you've fought so fucking hard to get out of whatever hole you got into, that you spoke to your therapist and put all the action plans in place, you've been working on your health, you've done everything right and then BANG. You've reverted back into this slump that can quickly spiral out of control.
The word draining gets thrown around a bit - and it is. It's draining to have to have an ongoing battle with the voice in your head that tells you that you're trash. That what you're doing is not enough, and you're a failure. It's draining to battle with that voice and it's so, so loud, that you get to the point of pure frustration and desperation to just shut it up for a few moments.
It's hard when you try and explain to someone, that you're aware that your thoughts are irrational, and you're fully aware that most of the time they make no sense, and it's equally as hard to try and justify that whilst you're aware of this - that at this exact moment, that's it's very real to you, and you are struggling.
Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash
I'm not a person to shy away from speaking up to say I'm struggling. I am. I am not in a great headspace. I haven't slept properly for a week - I have continual nightmares. I saw a girl today, probably the same age as me, in hysterics at the bottom of the pathway of the Tasman Bridge, and as I called 000 to hopefully prevent something absolutely unimaginable from happening - it struck me that it wasn't unimaginable. I have known the feeling of wanting to be free of pain. Free from voices. Free from debt and the overwhelming amount of pressure on the world.
She's been on my mind all day, and that I hope she's okay, and it was just a bad day and she knows it gets better, because eventually it does. It might not seem it; there have been a lot of nights where I've refused to believe this statement myself, but it turns around.
It does.
